Rule of Rose Mysteries

Jennifer escaped from Gregory’s cellar on the 28th of January 1930.

27 January

From W to J

Tomorrow night, I shall unlock your shackles. Let us live together forever.

everlasting

true love

i am yours

(“Gingerbread House” Cellar Bedroom)

But Jennifer didn’t arrive at the orphanage until (or shortly before) March 20, 1930.

20 March
From J to W

Wendy,
I’m here now, but I’m kind of afraid.
Everything is new to me.
I’m worried if I’ll get along with everyone.
(Sick Room, “Once Upon a Time”, letter on nightstand)

Where was she in between these times?
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My latest YouTube video can be found at the following url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vl25Zhiqy8

Please rate it.

Relevant blog-posts for this video are:

What Gregory Says at the Bus Stop

See-all Walkthrough, with Commentary: “The Little Princess” Chapter (Part 1): Bus Stop

Why I Am Reluctant to Summarize the Story of Rule of Rose (Part 1)

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There is an infamous unused Rule of Rose scene that has long been a topic of argument and speculation among Rule of Rose fans. This scene has no soundtrack.

Some Rule of Rose fans, however, have written dialogue for the scene, and dubbed the scene for sound.

You can watch this dubbed, fan-fiction scene on YouTube at this link: Fan-fiction dub of unused Rule of Rose scene.
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During the airship chapters, after the “Unlucky Clover Field”, one can find this ominous newspaper article in the Smoking Room:

20 December 1930

A tragic multiple homicide has occurred at an orphanage in Cardington
resulting in the deaths of all the children housed there.
Among the dead was one adult, Gregory M. Wilson, a local resident.
Analysis of the crime scene suggests that Wilson shot himself with a pistol.
Police have identified him as their prime suspect in the murders of the children.

Later in the game, at the front gate of the orphanage during the “Once Upon A Time” chapter, Jennifer tells us:

That day, I was escorted from the scene by Officer Doolittle. At first, it was reported that there were no survivors… Then, word got out that, miraculously, I had escaped the tragedy…

The authors of the game had set us up—if we had been diligent about finding all documents during the first playthrough—to expect Jennifer’s death. Then they surprised us by producing a way in which Jennifer could still survive. But what was the reason for the mistaken report? It would be better writing on the part of the authors of Rule of Rose—especially in a mystery game—if there is something that we can figure out to explain this. So let’s see if we can.

The following is a scenario that I think makes sense.

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As I mentioned in Part 1, I don’t think that the scene in the “Stray Dog and the Lying Princess” chapter of Rule of Rose, in which we see Gregory’s scars, is an accurate representation of of Jennifer’s forgotten past. In fact I think that most of that entire chapter is a falsehood that Jennifer has told herself. See my “Stray Dog Boss-Battle Mystery” blog-posts, linked to at the end of this blog-post, for more on that topic.

So, could it be that the scars that we see on Gregory were also a falsehood that Jennifer told herself about the massacre? And, if so, what sort of inner motivations might have led Jennifer to make up the falsehood that Gregory was scarred like that?

I propose that Jennifer loved Gregory (as a sort of father-substitute).

Jennifer surely must have kept it a secret that she had been kept in Gregory’s cellar all of those months, or he would have gotten in trouble for it. Jennifer wanted to protect Gregory.

Jennifer even declined Wendy’s offer to help her escape from the cellar, at first, because (as Jennifer explained to Wendy, in a letter):

…the man is so lonely, so sad. I can’t just leave him alone.

And in the “Once Upon A Time” chapter, Gregory is one of the only three that Jennifer cares enough about to want to see, in the flesh, before she leaves.

I think Jennifer loved Gregory, and I think that she may have believed that he loved her in return. So, I think, Jennifer was absolutely devastated by the idea (whether it was, in fact true, or not) that Gregory came to the orphanage to kill her. How could he possibly be willing to do that? The idea that two people that she had loved, Wendy and Gregory, had come for her to in order to kill her was an idea that Jennifer feared was true, and yet it was also an idea that Jennifer found to be too awful to bear.

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When Wendy brings Stray Dog through the front door of the orphanage, in the “Stray Dog and the Lying Princess” chapter, what are we supposed to think of the scars on his body?

I have argued, in my blog-post The Stray Dog Boss-battle Mystery (Part 5), that I don’t think that this scene truly occurred during Jennifer’s forgotten past. But even if so, I think it is important to understand the story that Jennifer told herself about what happened. So let’s ask ourselves what the scars on Gregory’s body would likely mean if we took the scene at face value (that is, as if the scene happened in Jennifer’s forgotten past exactly the way we see it in the game).

I can think of two possibilities:

(1) Wendy scarred Gregory as part of his being trained like a dog.

(2) Gregory self-inflicted the scars.

Can you think of other possibilities, assuming that we are taking the scene at face value?

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I tend to think of Rule of Rose as a mystery game.

No surprise there, right? My site is, after all, called Rule of Rose Mysteries.

But the Rule of Rose story doesn’t just contain a straightforward mystery or two, as a detective novel, or a TV episode of Monk, would be expected to do. The very nature of the Rule of Rose story itself is a mystery in a very fundamental way.

What do I mean by this?

In the case if a TV series like Monk, we understand the “reality” in which the story is set. The “reality” of Monk is supposed to represent the mundane “reality” of everyday life that we all experience.

But what is the “reality” in which Rule of Rose is set? This is, in fact, one of the big mysteries of the game. And this mystery is part of what makes the plot of the game very difficult to summarize with any confidence.

Strange things happen in Rule of Rose. Why? Is it because Jennifer has come to a place where supernatural forces are in play? Is it because Jennifer is dreaming? Is it because Jennifer is the protagonist of a weird story told by Gregory Wilson? Or is it some other reason?

For example, in the Rule of Rose story, Jennifer sees dead people as if they were alive. Why? Has Jennifer come to a haunted, or cursed, location in “real life”? Or is Jennifer just dreaming about dead people she once knew? Or is it because Jennifer is the protagonist of a weird story told by a crazy Gregory Wilson?
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In my blog-post, A Very Interesting Shadow in the Main Hall of the Orphanage (Part 1), I argued that the shadow seems to be, at least in part, that of Wendy-dressed-as-Joshua who is up the stairs. But I also argued that the shadow seems to be, in part, that of a hanged person.

Could it be that the shadow is totally that of Wendy-dressed-as-Joshua, but that it is in some respects that of Wendy-as-Joshua in the dream-plot (up the stairs) and in other respects that of Wendy-as-Joshua from a time during Jennifer’s forgotten past? A time in which Wendy-as-Joshua had committed suicide by hanging?

Wendy has generally been thought to have been killed by Gregory. The last time that we see Wendy during the Stray Dog boss-battle, she is being pulled though a door, and out of our sight, by Gregory. Because we know that Wendy was not alive when the police came, and that Gregory killed the other orphans, it is natural enough to assume that Gregory killed Wendy as well. But we don’t actually see Gregory kill Wendy, and we know that Wendy had previously interacted safely with Gregory.

What is more, I have previously argued that the scene at the front door of the orphanage, in which Jennifer and Wendy interact, and which ends with Wendy being snatched away by Gregory, never actually occurred during Jennifer’s forgotten past. The scene is, I believe, a falsehood generated by Jennifer to avoid the truth. See my blog-posts:
The Stray Dog Boss-battle Mystery (Part 1)
The Stray Dog Boss-battle Mystery (Part 2)
The Stray Dog Boss-battle Mystery (Part 3)
The Stray Dog Boss-battle Mystery (Part 4)

So we don’t really know for certain how Wendy met her death.

But we do know that the theme song of the Rule of Rose game is “A Love Suicide”.

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Is there any viable alternative to the hypothesis (described in Part 9b) that the scene of Jennifer watching Gregory through the cellar window is based on a memory that occurred before Jennifer entered the cellar room on her first day there?

During the time shortly before I started my Rule of Rose Mysteries blog-site, I had developed an alternative hypothesis that grew out of an “evil-Wendy” theory. I wrote about this on the GameSpot/GameFAQs forum, but that thread has long since disappeared. I think that I can reconstruct the jist of the theory, however.

Jennifer wrote in a letter to Wendy (the letter can be found in the “Once Upon a Time” chapter, in the Sickroom, by the lamp):

16 November

Dear Wendy, my visitor in the window,

Thank you so much for writing to me. The man calls me Joshua, but my name is Jennifer. I’ve been in this room ever since he saved me. He’s a nice person… but he won’t let me leave.

Jennifer’s statement that she has been in the room “ever since he saved me” is dated 16 November, so this opens up the possibility that Jennifer was let out of the room at times between 16 November and the date of her escape the following January.

Why would Gregory change his behavior after 16 November from what it had been before?

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In this post, I’ll discuss how we might fit together some puzzle pieces relating to Jennifer’s arrival at Gregory’s house during her forgotten past, if we start from the hypothesis that this scene of Jennifer watching Gregory through the cellar window occurred before she entered the cellar room on her first day there.

Let’s say that the airship, carrying Jennifer and her parents, crashed on June 22, or June 23, 1929.  And Jennifer arrived at Gregory’s house on the 27th or the 28th of June, 1929.  See my blog-post, When Did the Airship Crash?.

What happened in between these two times?

Let’s say that Jennifer wandered away into the woods in a daze, her memory lost, so that when the wreckage of the airship was found—which probably wouldn’t have taken searchers long to achieve—she wasn’t there with it.  After days of wandering, Jennifer was in a very weakened condition.  Perhaps Gregory, looking for another little boy to kidnap, found Jennifer unconscious, or very weak, in the woods. Previous missing children incidences (or reports) were dated on the 7th, 14th, and 21st. The 28th would be the next date in that pattern. So it would be the right time for Gregory to be looking for the next child to kidnap.

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